How to get Github Copilot for free

Are you a student or an open source maintainer? Then you are eligible to get Github Copilot for free!

Gonzalo Fernandez Plaza
3 min readAug 23, 2022

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GitHub Copilot, the AI pair programmer that suggests code in your editor, was made available to all developers two months ago. Copilot can suggest complete methods, boilerplate code, whole unit tests, and even complex algorithms in real-time. Are you interested in it? GitHub Copilot costs $10/month or $100/year per user, but GitHub offers a 60 days trial to everyone by signing in at the following link.

After this tutorial, you’ll have GitHub Copilot ready to pair.
After this tutorial, you’ll have GitHub Copilot ready to pair.

But what happens when these two free months run out? If you are a student or a maintainer of popular open source projects, GitHub Copilot is available for free! Let’s see how to apply for it.

GitHub Copilot for Students

1) If you are a student, you get access to GitHub Copilot for free through the Student Developer Pack. So, first of all, you’ll have to sign up for this pack. In this post, I explained in detail how to do it and the main benefits of this free subscription, as it’s a fantastic free subscription.

2) You can sign up for the Github Copilot 2-months trial at the following link. If you are a student and you have access to the Student Develop Pack, it might allow you to get it for free directly here, so you won’t need to do the trial if that’s your case. Otherwise, don’t worry; they will give you the option after the trial finishes.

3) You'll see this screen when you finish your trial (GitHub will send you an email) or if you are allowed to get it directly from the previous step. Just click on continue.

4) By clicking on that button, you’ll go to the billing screen of your GitHub account https://github.com/settings/billing. By clicking on “Select GitHub Copilot Plan”, it will detect that you are a student, and you won’t have to do anything else.

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Gonzalo Fernandez Plaza

Computer Science Engineer & Tech Lead 🖥️. Publishing AWS & Snowflake ❄️ courses & exams. https://www.fullcertified.com